Persistent Knitter

My daughter has two pairs of hand knit socks. One made of Opal and one from Lorna’s Laces Sport Weight sock yarn.  She really loves them both - and she recently expressed interest in some striped socks I was making for myself.  Knowing that she’d love some really bright colors, and having a need to do some experimenting, we did a bit of Kool Aid dyeing this weekend. Here she is with our end result:

Not bad, if I do say so myself! I was aiming for short stripes - since her socks have a smaller # of stitches around, I think this will come out to be 2 or 3 row stripes of each color.  Only knitting them up will tell me for sure.

So how’d we do it? Well, we used unsweetened Koolaid packets. I like the colors you can get with chemical dyes, but the extra caution and pots/pans/setup you have to have around the house really means I’ll probably not do that on a moments notice. The Koolaid cost me 20 cents per packet (we used two) and I felt safe enough with it that Katie could help me while we were doing it.  Here’s the basic instructions:

(Update: For a great color chart on koolaid colors, go Here.)

Materials

• 2 packets of Koolaid. 1 Cherry, 1 Orange
• Saran Wrap, or a Ziploc bag
• Casserole type container to hold yarn while in microwave
• Microwave
• Water
• Two disposable cups
• Two spoons
• Ball of superwash sock yarn, white. (I used Zimba Top)
• Niddy Noddy or something to wrap yarn around into a skein form.
• Rubber gloves (if you want. I didn’t use them)

Make a skein out of the ball of yarn.  I used a 1 yard niddy noddy for this skein.  If you want longer stripes, make a longer skein.  Tie the skein in 4 places using figure 8 ties. This will prevent the yarn from being tangled while it’s wet.  Fill your kitchen sink with enough lukewarm water to cover the yarn. Submerge the skeined yarn into the water. Let soak for at least 5 minutes. Make sure the yarn is really really wet.
While the yarn is soaking - Put the powder from each packet of koolaid into one cup. Orange in one, Cherry in another.  Add approx 1 cup water to each.  Stir with separate spoons to make sure the koolaid is dissolved really well.  Warmer water will dissolve it better.  Wash your hands in a different sink than your yarn is in. Make sure you don’t have any koolaid crystals on it, otherwise when you pick up the white yarn, you’ll see spots of color forming. Ask me how I know :)

Lay out enough saran wrap to lay the full length of the yarn skein on it on your counter.  This area might become a bit messy so make sure it’s somewhere that you can clean up with soap and water afterwards. Take the yarn out of the sink. Gently squeeze as much excess water out as you can.  Lay the skein flat on the saran wrap so that it’s at it’s full length. 

Take the cup of cherry koolaid and starting at one end, slowly pour it over the skein of yarn. The yarn should still absorb plenty of the liquid.   To make the color more uniform at that end, fold the saran wrap over the yarn and give it a good squish or two.  Do the same with the Orange Koolaid from the other end.  One end of the skein should be orange, one should be red, and the color in the middle some mixture of the two (I left mine a little bit white in the middle where they meet)

Fold the saran wrap over the skein and pat it together so it sort of seals on itself.  Now you can fold this in thirds (another opportunity to squish the koolaid through the yarn here) and place in your microsave safe dish.

Place in the microwave on high for 2 minutes. Let rest for 2 minutes. Repeat on high 2 mins and rest 2 minutes a few times until all the dye is absorbed. Mine took three cooking cycles.  Open the saran wrap carefully; as it will be super hot - it’s best if you can be patient and wait a few minutes first.  Rinse the yarn in warm water - it should run clear immediately (if it doesn’t - wrap it back up in the saran wrap and cook for another 2 mins)  Hang yarn to dry.

I used this method because I didn’t want completely solid colors, and the variations you get with the squishing add to the character of the yarn. If you want your two colors more solid you can use the "dip" method.  You’ll have to use a lot more water because you’ll want to dunk each end of the skein in the different color koolaid mixtures.  The cherry was super red and really made the yarn dark. The orange didn’t work as well - I might use two packets next time, or add more water to start with so I get it a bit  more evenly on that side of the skein.
Looking at my yarn I’m not sure the orange is dark enough yet - I might just put it through another cycle, but probably not. I’ll probably just do something slightly different on my next sample skein. I want to try and come up with a blue/purple combo. :)